"Then you knew wrong. I have come to claim nothing. Perhaps I have no right to claim anything; so it need make no difference--"
"It must make a difference to John," she interrupted coldly. "I was thinking of him. It is hard on him at all events."
"Hard! Of course it is hard," he answered with a sudden pain at his heart. "Yet it is not my fault. I meant no harm."
"You have done no harm as far as I know," was the still colder reply. But in her turn she rose and looked out to that low bar of red still lingering in the horizon. "It is all very unfortunate, but we shall manage,--somehow." There was a pause, then she added in quite her ordinary tone, "I don't think John can be coming to-night, so we need not wait dinner for him. They have taken your things to the end room. I see a light there."
"But I have no right--" he began, crossing to where she stood.
She turned to him with a sudden gracious smile. "Right! you have every right to everything. You have given me,--what have you not given me?"
A tall figure crouching in the verandah rose as they passed through the open French window.
"Who is that?" she asked, half startled.
"Afzul Khân. I can't take him back to the regiment, of course, but he came so far with me. He has business, he says, in Faizapore."
"Afzul Khân! Call him here, please."